Round and round the not so marigoround

slimboyflat ,your videos you present of Rowan williams in no way answers Coded Logic questions ? in his OP.?

Heb.11: 1-3 says that" Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for.the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.

Heb.11:2 .for by means of this the men of old times had witness born to them .

Heb11:3. By faith we percieve that the system of things were put in order by Gods word so that what is beheld has come to be out of things that do not appear ?

Romans Chapter 13 states that everyone should be in subjection to the superior authorities ,for their is no authority except by God .

2 Cor.4:4 States that the god of this system of things is not jehovah but his adversary Satan the Devil.

The book of Job clearly shows that Satan not only has freedom to go from heaven speaking to God one on one but he also has the freedom to roam around the earth tempting people.For thousands of years no doubt.

Then the book of Revelation indicates that Satan was cast out of heaven and confined to the earth to wreak havoc here apparently.in these last days .

Didnt he have freedom to go back and forth from heaven and earth all the time ?even talking to Jehovah God ? as outlined in the Old Testament ?

When was Satan ever confined to heaven ? so that he couldnt travel to earth ? What scripture is that ? So that he could then be cast out of heaven and confined to the earth ?

But havent we already established that he was always walking about on the earth ready to devour someone ?

Including tempting Jesus ? 2000 years + or - so ago ?

Romans 13 says that Jehovah is in charge of all superiour authorities ,2 Cor.4:4 says that Satan is the God of this system of things. ????

I feel I already answered your question in the very last sentence of my thread:

I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question.

But, beyond the words or Richard Feynman, I think there's something deeper here too. And that is that I care about what is knowable. I care about what we could actually learn. And this is why I hold science in such a high regard - even beyond it's practical uses - because it always operates on the frontiers of knowledge. It is always pushing back against the unknown and shinning a light into the darkness of our ignorance.

There may be things that we can never know. There may be things that are so complex and fundamental that they will forever remain beyond our grasps. But why waste one moment worrying about that?

Every single year new instruments that can detect things never before detected are built. Every single year tens of thousands of new discoveries are made in every single field of study. There are more scientific papers published in a single day today than existed in all the libraries a hundred years ago. The biggest "problem" science faces right now is that experts are working in narrower and narrower fields because there's so much to know. Trust me when I say a lack of discovery is NOT a problem!

I've also noticed a patter with you SBF - in that for our scientific and empirical methods to knowledge - you ask for infinite evidence. And yet when it comes to claims about Gods or the supernatural you seem to have almost no filter whatsoever. It's a very strange and unbalanced thing to behold. Is there even one single statement that we could definitively make about the gods or the supernatural?

I ask this because, the last time I checked, things which don't manifest in reality and things which don't exist are identical.

I don't think there is anything definite we can say about anything. Like philosopher Quine said: "no statemeant is immune to revision".

Which is not the same as saying we cannot make claims and give reasons for them. The problems arise when people start saying: "this is the only legitimate answer". Such as the atheistic answer to the problem of evil for example. Or any particular theistic response for that matter.

If people are making definite statements about God I object to that too.

Science is great at answering all sorts of questions, which beguiles some into thinking it should be able to answer all important questions. Dawkins as a "professor for public understanding of science" added much confusion in this regard.

I notice that the next scientist to hold this post has attempted to remedy the situation by explaining there are questions science cannot answer, including the existence or otherwise of God.

Sbf while it is true that no state is immune to revision you have to ask why the revision was made?

if the revision has an ideological aspect then there is an element of faith at work. Humans will always display faith in one way or another - the question then arises about how much the perspective disrupts concenus and amongst which groups.

Alright, so not a single definitive statement we can make about gods or the supernatural.

Are there any well founded - although provisional - statements we could make about the gods or the supernatural?

(as a side note - would you not be comfortable making definitive statements about synthetic propositions [e.g. there are no married bachelors]? Would you not be comfortable making definitive statements about analytical propositions [e.g. apples do not grow from blue coral reefs]?

Are there any well founded - although provisional - statements we could make about the gods or the supernatural?

absolutely - we can ask whose authority are the statements about the gods supporting? and then makes statements suggesting which regime, or what particular traditions are being supported by the supernatural and why.

I agree synthetic statements are definitive. They are also tautologous if they are truly synthetic statements, including all of mathematics. And I agree no analystic statement is immune to revision.

Personally I don't find anything I can say about the subject of God that I would call well founded.

Provisionally I would say that existence is a mystery that seems to require some sort of explanation. And the idea that consciousness arose from nothing and has no purpose beyond the purpose it makes itself, seems like a leap of faith in some sense.

I like Rowan Williams' comment in the last video where he describes the encounter with God to a footprint in the forest. From just the footprint, you know it's big, you know it was there, it leaves an impression, but beyond that there's not much you can say for sure about it.

And it's interesting that none of the arguments "new" atheists use are anything new. The Bible itself already complains that God stands by and allows suffering. It already asks why. It already says that such a God is incomprehensible and it seems wicked. None of these observations are new. Believers incorporate these difficult problems into their questions about how God is, whereas atheists use them as a basis for saying God cannot exist or he is evil if he does exist. Sometimes it's not clear which.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say consciousness arose out of nothing. Nor that it has no purpose. As best we can tell, consciousness is an emergent property of brains. The more complex the brain (e.g. fly vs dog) the more self aware the creature is. And I'd also point out that brains are immensely useful. Being able to make sense of our environments and make predictions about the future is hugely beneficial to an animals survival.

More importantly, even if we do presume the existence of a God, I still don't see how that sheds any light on the nature of consciousness except to kick the question back further: Why do god's have consciousness and how did their consciousness arise out of nothing?

...

Concerning Rowan Williams' pig analogy, I find it more than a bit problematic. We know a pig's foot print because we have prior experience with pigs feet and their foot prints. And even if we came across an unknown creatures foot prints we could still make educated guesses about that creature by comparing it to other creatures foot prints.

But with gods we have no prior knowledge. We can't tell the difference between God inspired life and non-god inspired life. God created universes and non-god created universes. God formed consciousness and non-god formed consciousness.

If Rowan William's can't tell me what types of legs a creature has - much less if it even has legs - how can we determine what kind of foot print such a creature might leave? If Rowan Williams' can't tell us any aspects or properties of a God - how can we go looking for the effects of such a god?

. . .

Lastly, I'd like to point out that the problem of evil is really only a problem for Christians who claim God is all loving and all powerful. And it's a HUGE problem. One that, rightly for the ages, atheists have been bringing up again and again because it's just so absurd. Saying it's "nothing new" in no way diminishes how utterly devastating this problem is to mainstream Christianity. It'd be a bit like saying "talking about Jupiter's moons orbiting the gas giant is nothing new against geocentricism. The Heliocentric's have been point this out for hundreds of years."

Well yeah! Of course they have! Because it shows how demonstrably false the teachings of the church that the earth was the center of the universe was. Likewise, the problem of evil shows how demonstrably false many Christians belief that an all loving and all powerful god exists is.

(P.S. The Bible saying something is "incomprehensible" in no way excuses it from it's demonstrable falsehoods. Christians don't get to say "God is incomprehensible" therefore humanity really did begin six thousand years ago with Adam and Eve despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. Or, the sun was formed after the earth - or God is all loving and all powerful - or any other nonsense in the Bible - simply by appealing to the incomprehensible.)

I mean to say the idea that consciousness arose from non-consciousness inside the universe as we know it, rather than, for example, a consciousness or a being that is not part of the universe. As Roman Williams says, not an item or thing in the universe. What Terry Eagleton calls the 'Yeti theory of God' where many atheists imagine they can use science to eliminate God as if he's some sort of mythical creature.

I am not saying the problem of evil is solved because it's old. The point Williams makes is a good one. The fact is that people in the middle of suffering often find a conception of God that works for them. Some atheists may dismiss this as "no atheists in foxholes" scenario. But that really is an impoverished and cynical view of the attempts of fellow humans to make sense of the world and suffering in a way that combines conceptions of a transcendent being.

I agree definite claims about creationism and 6000 years are stupid. I didn't think that's what we were talking about.